


Running All The Time

by TheSigyn



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-25
Updated: 2010-11-25
Packaged: 2018-04-15 13:10:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4608024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSigyn/pseuds/TheSigyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor had been treating Leela as a student, trying to teach her her history and her heritage, how to see the universe through the lens of scientific truth, rather than superstition and ritual. He was slowly stripping away a lifetime of savage brutality, in an attempt to reveal the brilliant and singular woman he knew her to be. But he began to suspect his one-sided training was robbing her of something just as precious as her intellect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Running All The Time

  
“Would you please calm down, Leela?” the Doctor asked for the umpteenth time. He was flat on his back, trying to concentrate on yet another repair job on the console, and she was distracting him. “You’re twitchy as an Abodian ravvit!”   
  
Leela had been getting more and more edgy lately, circling with unconstrained energy, pacing like a tiger in a cage. At first it was just a few moments here and there, once or twice a day. Usually the Doctor would say something, engage her attention, and she would revert back to her habitual alert stillness. But these bouts of random energy were becoming more and more frequent, and now it seemed she was moving all the time! As if she were unable to keep still. The Doctor wasn’t used to that. It was starting to bother him.   
  
“I am sorry, Doctor,” Leela said, her precise tones more strained than usual. She’d been bouncing off the white walls for the last twenty minutes, touching one and then another, opening the door to the corridor and disappearing before coming back into the console room, her eyes troubled. “I will do as you ask.” She closed her eyes and clenched her fists, forcing herself to remain still.   
  
The Doctor didn’t like the way she obeyed like a slave to a master. “You can do as you like,” he amended. “I’m just trying to concentrate. Unless you want the water in the showers cold.”   
  
“I do not know what I would like, Doctor,” Leela said. “I do not feel contented.”   
  
“What? Has Earth not been to your liking?” the Doctor asked. He’d been trying to show Leela the achievements of her ancestors, taking her to London and Hong Kong, the great cities of old, revealing to her the fine arts and sciences of her species.   
  
“Earth is a wondrous place, Doctor,” Leela said. “As is your magical TARDIS.”   
  
“It’s not magic, Leela,” the Doctor said automatically.   
  
“Your scienceal TARDIS,” Leela corrected herself, and the Doctor tried not to laugh. “But the Earth is not my home.”   
  
“Of course not,” the Doctor said. “This is your home. For now, anyway.”   
  
“And I am grateful for this shelter,” Leela said. But then she sighed.   
  
The Doctor craned his neck and glanced at her. Her normally shining face was clouded. “So what’s the trouble?”   
  
Leela twitched and began pacing again. “Do you never feel it around you, Doctor?”   
  
“Feel what?”   
  
“The walls. The stillness. The air so dead, the light so close and soulless, the flatness of the floor beneath your feet.”   
  
“I suppose so,” the Doctor said, and twisted in another wire.   
  
Leela touched the wall again, her fingers running around one of the circular panels. “The walls are all around us.”   
  
“Good thing,” the Doctor said. “Deep space makes for a poor houseguest.”  
  
“We have been sedentary inside here,” Leela said. “Like the old and the infirm.”   
  
The Doctor suppressed another smile. He always loved her turn of phrase, how the human words had degenerated and formalized, leaving Leela with a posh vocabulary and a brutally simplistic syntax. “Why don’t you go down to the track,” the Doctor said. He rarely used the exercise cordons of the ship, but there were many who adored them. “Run some of that energy off.”  
  
“Run in a circle like an animal chasing its tail,” Leela said with scorn. “Run alone to no end, without the sound the wind, without the scent of growing things.”   
  
“You could go to the arboretum,” the Doctor said.   
  
“Where the hungry leaves grow up the walls, searching for a sun they will never find,” Leela whispered.   
  
The Doctor put down his sonic screwdriver and pulled himself out from under the console. He stared at Leela. She was pale and distracted. He began to wonder if he’d been handling her wrong. He’d been treating her as a student, trying to teach her her history and her heritage, how to see the universe through the lens of scientific truth, rather than superstition and ritual.   
  
He was slowly stripping away a lifetime of savage brutality, in an attempt to reveal the brilliant and singular woman he knew her to be. But he began to suspect his one-sided training was robbing her of something just as precious as her intellect. There was more to Leela than backwards mysticism and blind allegiance. She was fearless and brutal, yes, but she was clever, with a clarity of thought and a gift for rapid decision making. She was intuitive in a way he could never be. She was no fool, was Leela.   
  
The Doctor, on the other hand... he’d been being a right idiot.   
  
“Hang on, Leela,” the Doctor said. He jumped to his feet and touched a few controls on the console. The TARDIS engines squealed as if he’d slammed on the brakes, and then started up again faster than before.   
  
“What is happening?” Leela asked, alarmed. The TARDIS had never made such a sound before.   
  
“Oh, I just changed coordinates too quickly,” the Doctor said. “Sorry, girl,” he said, patting the console.  
  
“You have changed our destination?” Leela asked. “I thought we were going to ... what did you call it... Paris?”  
  
“You won’t like Paris,” the Doctor said. “I’ve got someplace better.” The TARDIS set down and he pressed the controls for the door to open. He gestured for Leela to exit.   
  
“Here you are,” the Doctor said. “The Cascade mountains.”   
  
Leela left, hesitantly, and stopped in amazement the moment she set her feet on the ground. Surrounding the TARDIS were a series of mid-size mountains, graced with conifers and wild orchids. The sun was just rising, and everything glowed with a pinkish-orange light. The mist flowed soft and silver through the trees, and a dozen little streams trickled over roots and fallen logs, some of them casting waterfalls down the mossy banks. Where the TARDIS stood now was a meadow of grass and bracken fern, and a herd of young elk looked up from their grazing, shaking their antlers at the two people who stepped out of the blue box.   
  
“Oh, Doctor!” Leela whispered in awe. “What planet is this?”   
  
“Earth, Leela,” the Doctor said. “This is your home planet.”   
  
“This cannot be Earth,” Leela said, shaking her head in flat denial. “Earth is all boxes and human speech, smoke and excrement and harsh flat rocks for your feet.”  
  
“They’re called roads, Leela,” the Doctor said. “But this is Earth, too. This is how Earth is meant to be.”   
  
“You mean this is how the gods created this planet?” Leela asked, staring at the pristine landscape. “What have my people done?”   
  
The Doctor smiled.   
  
“Are those animals good for hunting?” Leela asked, pointing at the elk.   
  
“Yes,” the Doctor said. “But we have plenty of food.”   
  
“I am not hungry,” Leela said. “I am eager!” She took a deep breath of the morning air. “What is that scent on the wind?”   
  
“Pine sap and leaf mulch,” the Doctor said. He sniffed. “Some kind of honeysuckle.”   
  
Leela laughed with pure delight. “Is it safe to run, Doctor?”   
  
“Run as far as you wish,” the Doctor said fondly, and Leela took off across the meadow, her strong legs pumping against the ground. Her hair streamed out behind her in a mahogany cloud as she chased after the massive elk. The Doctor wondered if he should warn her off, but it was spring, not rut, and the elk were not aggressive. They saw a predator running toward them and they took off as one. Leela caught up to them, running with the surety of a cheetah on a veldt. The Doctor smiled. Maybe he should take her to Africa, next.   
  
Leela was lost for a moment within the elks’ brown flanks, one with the herd, until they leapt one after another into the forest. She did not pursue them beneath the trees, instead choosing to remain in the meadow, running and running, a wild animal, a child delighted with the movement inside her own skin.   
  
The Doctor watched her until she vanished out of sight. Poor Leela. A wild creature trapped in a cage. No wonder she was going off the rails.   
  
The Doctor went back inside the TARDIS and came out a minute later with a beach umbrella and a lounge chair. As the sun rose, burning off the mist, the Doctor lay in the shade breathing in the scent of the mountain air — Leela was right, the air in the TARDIS was stuffy by comparison — reading a bit of Dickens.   
  
A few hours later Leela returned to the TARDIS, her hair a bird’s nest of twigs and moss, her legs streaked with mud, and her face glowing with enthusiasm and life. “Oh, you missed the morning, Doctor!” Leela panted with excitement.   
  
“I saw it from here,” the Doctor said. He looked up at her. Leela was carrying a wild turkey, already gutted, its throat neatly slit by her boot knife. He laughed. “I guess we’re having turkey hash tonight. I’ve got a good recipe.”   
  
“Thank you for bringing me here, Doctor,” Leela said. “I can finally see how my people could have come from this place.”   
  
“There are more places like this on Earth,” the Doctor said, standing up. “Thousands more.”   
  
Leela cocked her head. “Then why not the whole planet?” she asked. “Why do the humans cluster in straight lines and sit atop their own waste, when there are places such as this?”   
  
The Doctor shrugged. “Cities have their own people, Leela, their own wildlife, their own structure. It is a habitat as complex and unique as this one, and those who grew up there find it as hard to adapt to a landscape like this as you do to their roads and buildings.” The Doctor paused. “My people congregate in cities,” he admitted. “I spent most of my early life in University, which was in the capital. It’s what I’m used to.” He touched Leela’s shoulder. “I’ve been a fool to show you only one aspect of this planet. I’m sorry it never occurred to me before.”   
  
“You gravitated to that which you knew,” Leela said. “It is, as you told me, a logic.”   
  
“A logic, but a flawed one. I’ve been trying to teach you something about your planet, and I can still do that. But I forgot that you have a wisdom that I and most of your people here have lost.” He took the turkey from her and examined the carcass. It was very expertly cleaned. It just needed to be plucked. “You teach me, and I’ll teach you. Agreed?”   
  
“Agreed, Doctor,” Leela said.   
  
They went back inside the TARDIS and Leela prepared to bring her kill to the kitchens. She paused in the doorway to corridor. “Doctor?” she asked as he set coordinates. “You did not join me in my hunt.”   
  
“I don’t hunt much,” the Doctor said. “Not animals, anyway.”  
  
“But do you never get the urge to run and run until there is nothing but the sound of the wind, and you cannot speak or think or even remember your own name?”  
  
The Doctor grinned at her, his teeth flashing white in his face. “All the time, Leela.” He ran his fingers over his TARDIS console. “All the time.”   



End file.
